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Wednesday, 7 May 2014

Research Roundup Spring 2014

Welcome
to the latest research roundup from the Addiction Research Group based in the Department of Psychological Sciences,
University of Liverpool.
As ever, we have been working hard over the past few months on many different
research topics, and in this blog post we have condensed some of our recent publications
and activities into bite-size portions for your enjoyment.

The
first two publications reported investigations of how our drinking behaviour is
influenced by that of other people.

A study conducted
in our bar lab was published in Alcoholism: Clinical and
Experimental Research.
We examined how social acquaintances influence each other’s alcohol consumption
using a confederate design. A pair of social drinkers was invited to the
laboratory, and one of them (the confederate) was secretly informed to choose
either alcoholic or soft drinks when offered them by the experimenter. Both
individuals were subsequently offered drinks to consume while they played a
game together (the popular ‘4 pics 1 word’ game). The key variable of interest
was the amount of alcohol that the naïve participant chose to consume. We found
that naïve participants were strongly influenced by their acquaintance’s
choice: if the confederate chose alcoholic drinks, the naïve participant was
much more likely to choose them as well. Furthermore, the majority of
participants believed that their drinking was not influenced by their partner’s
choices. This study was the first to use the confederate design in individuals
who knew each other before the study, and it has important implications for the
psychological mechanisms that underlie effects of imitation on drinking
behaviour. The study was conducted by Rebecca Dallas, an undergraduate
psychology student who is first author on the paper. The paper was the topic of
a press
release and it was covered by several print and online media outlets,
including the Metro and science website RedOrbit. The research was also covered by some other
unexpected news sources, including ‘RealBollywood’,
which surprised and excited us (mostly the former).

The
second paper, by Eric Robinson and colleagues, was published in Substance Use and Misuse. This Internet study investigated
if there is an association between perceived drinking norms and usual drinking
behaviour in UK students. We also
included interventions to correct misperceptions about the drinking behaviour
of others, and increase intentions to drink responsibly. We found that peer
drinking was associated with individual differences in drinking: individuals
who believed other students drank responsibly also drank responsibly. However,
interventions based on accurate norm messages did not influence intentions to
drink responsibly, possibly because they were not seen as credible. This study
adds to a growing literature suggesting that social norm interventions mayhave limited efficacy in reducing hazardous drinking
in UK students.

Speaking
of bite-size portions, we have diversified from only studying alcohol. We
recently published two papers that examined the motivation to obtain and
consume chocolate and pizza.

The
first paper by Charlotte Hardman and colleagues was published in Appetite.
This research continued previous work by our group (see here
and here) examining whether the
anticipation of receiving a reward, in this case delicious cheese and tomato
pizza, would influence physiological (salivation) and attentional responses in
hungry participants. Whilst there was no evidence for any effects of anticipation
on salivation, we demonstrated that anticipation influenced initial attentional
processing of pizza pictures. While this result wasn’t quite as clear cut as
our previous studies with beer and chocolate, it does suggest that anticipation
of reward plays a role in attentional bias for rewarding cues.

Our
second snack-themed paper was published by Jessica Werthmann, Matt Field and
colleagues in Journal of Behavior Therapy and
Experimental Psychiatry.
In this study we examined whether manipulating attention towards or away from
chocolate using a modified anti-saccade task could influence craving and consumption
of chocolate. We found that participants who shifted attention towards
chocolate cues subsequently ate more chocolate during an ad-libitum taste test compared to those shifted their attention
away from chocolate.These findings suggest
that training attentional bias away from food-cues can reduce consumption of
that food, although in other papers we have been sceptical about the clinical
applications of ‘attentional bias modification’, particularly in addiction.

Last but
no means least, Jasna Martinovic and colleagues published a paper in PLoS One
(we support open access!). In this study we examined electrophysiological
correlates of Pavlovian-to-Instrumental transfer (PIT) in individuals who
regularly drink beer and eat chocolate. PIT is the phenomenon whereby drug-cues
evoke an anticipation of drug reward and thereby increase instrumental responding
for drug reward. The brain mechanisms that underlie PIT effects are poorly
understood and this was the focus of this study. We examined whether
electrophysiological indices of the motivational salience of beer and chocolate
pictures (the P300 and Slow Potential) would be associated with behavioural PIT
responses for beer and chocolate rewards. We found clear behavioural PIT
effects and some indication of increased Slow Potentials in response to the
beer and chocolate pictures, but unfortunately these were not related to each
other. Possibly, behavioural PIT effects are generated by subcortical
structures that cannot be detected using EEG, or maybe we just didn’t use the
right method.

As well
as writing papers we also like to get out and see the world, all in the name of
science of course...

Inge
Kersbergen, Jay Duckworth and Natasha Clarke attended Alcohol Research UK’s first postgraduate and early
career symposium in London in March. Natasha and Inge both gave oral
presentations. Inge presented her own study, ‘Visual attention to health information on alcoholic drinks containers’
which was an eye-tracking study examining responses to warning labels on
alcohol drinks containers, and Natasha presented the paper, ‘Alcohol-induced risk taking on the BART
mediates alcohol priming’ which we discussed in a previous roundup.

Matt
Field discussed the role of attentional bias in addiction at the ‘Maastricht symposium on the role of
attentional bias in psychopathology’, in March. After the conference, our former
(temporary) colleague Jessica Werthmann successfully defended her PhD thesis, for
which we offer our congratulations!!

That is all
for this research roundup. Thank you for reading! As always, if you would like
to get in touch about anything featured here please contact Prof.
Matt Field, and
if you are interested in taking part in our research please contact Andy
Jones